Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia

The domesticated horse, the chariot, and the wheel came to East Asia from the west, and so did horse riding:

Mair, Victor H.  "The Horse in Late Prehistoric China:  Wresting Culture and Control from the 'Barbarians.'"  In Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew, and Katie Boyle, ed.  Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse,  McDonald Institute Monographs.  Cambridge:  McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003, pp. 163-187.

We now have newly unearthed archeological evidence for the introduction of wheeled vehicles to East Asia.  Here is a link to the recent discovery of the oldest wheel-tracks at the Pingliang Tai site in Huaiyang, Henan Province 河南淮阳平粮台.

The Pingliang Tai tracks are 4,200 years old and were produced by a two-wheeled cart.  In comparison, the oldest wheels in the West are much earlier.

J. P. Mallory and I discussed some of the evidence for the origins of the Chinese chariot in The Tarim Mummies (London:  Thames and Hudson, 2000), pp. 324-326:

If the chariot came from the West, what about the name for the vehicle? Here there is some linguistic evidence to support such a movement. The Chinese word for chariot, the modern Mandarin ch'e, would have been articulated roughly as *kl^yag† during the Shang dynasty, and this word bears a certain resemblance to one of the Proto-Indo-European words for 'wheel' (*k^wék^wlo) which provided the base for the word for vehicle in Tocharian, i.e. Tocharian A kukäl and Tocharian B kokale. Rather than a direct Tocharian source, it has been suggested that the underlying form may have been some form of early Iranian language. This would hardly be surprising in that the Indo-Iranians perfected chariot warfare and either introduced it or, at least, were so proficient in it that they were the acknowledged masters of chariotry in the Near East. It seems probable, then, that Bronze Age Iranians or Tocharians came into contact with peoples of western China in the 2nd millenium BC and introduced the chariot to the Shang. The venue of the meeting of these two worlds was, naturally, the modern province of Xinjiang and the area just to its northeast. Once introduced, the Chinese began to work their own special technological magic on any western loan. But the West was not only supplying them with vehicles, it was also sending something of its own magic into the very courts of the Shang.

[†In this paragraph, ^ indicates that the following letter is a superscript.]

(the quotation is from p. 326)

See also:

Victor H. Mair, "Old Sinitic *Myag, Old Persian Maguš, and English Magician", Early China, 15 (1990), 27–47.  Available on JSTOR here.  See esp. 45-46.

Robert S. Bauer, "Sino-Tibetan *kolo 'Wheel'," Sino-Platonic Papers 47 (Aug. 1994), 1-11. (free pdf)

chē 車 *kɬàɣ ("chariot"), cf. Greek kýklos, Latin cyclus

In general, if a radical new technology or cultural manifestation is borrowed from another civilization, chances are good that the word for that technological innovation or cultural phenomenon may have come along with the object or idea that it represents.

Readings

• "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
• "Of horse riding and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (4/21/19)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/8/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2" (3/12/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 3" (3/16/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 4" (3/24/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 5" (3/28/16) — especially pertinent to this post
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17)
• "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16)
• "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
• "GA" (8/6/17)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/17/18)
• "Of ganders, geese, and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (10/29/18)
• "Eurasian eureka" (9/12/16)
• "Of knots, pimples, and Sinitic reconstructions" (11/12/18)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/18/19)
• "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/18)
• "Thai 'khwan' ('soul') and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/28/19)
• "Sinitic for "iron" in Balto-Slavic" (2/15/19)

[Thanks to Peter Kupfer and Chris Button]